From the start of the year, businesses all over the world have been faced with the challenge of transitioning to remote work. It has already changed the world dramatically.
The pandemic has forced companies to adapt to the new realities, in some cases revealing the need for improvement in various business operations.
For instance, if your business is client-facing, it is important to remain accessible and available with open phone lines. If your phone system is outdated, it can be a big challenge for your IT department to make your business remote-work-friendly. Upgrading your phone system to a VoIP phone eliminates this obstacle and opens possibilities for improved performance, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility.
There are numerous VoIP providers on the market that can help you make the switch to a more modern and scalable phone system.
In this article, we’ll run you through 4 key ways VoIP phone systems can make it easier for your company to work remotely during a pandemic.
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1. Flexibility and Accessibility
A VoIP phone system is a cloud-based system, and therefore is flexible by nature. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, meaning you connect via an IP connection (the internet, essentially).
What this means is that you are vastly more flexible and accessible to your clients. Your IT department no longer needs to spend time on prepping traditional systems for remote work—VoIP phones are designed to be portable.
If you are working from home, you can easily direct calls from the office to your work phone at home, and your clients would be none the wiser. If your company allows you to work from home some days, and you forgot your work phone in your office, you can also redirect those calls to your private device with ease.
Alternatively, if you’re unavailable for a period of time, your colleagues can choose to take your calls by redirecting them to their phones (and vice versa).
2. Low Costs
During the covid-19 pandemic, many businesses have had to scale back in one way or another. The benefits of a VoIP system is that it is low cost.
Because a VoIP system uses the internet instead of traditional phone lines, phone calls are far cheaper—even international calls.
If you are looking to preserve some cash flow in these uncertain times, opting for a IP-connection-based system instead of paying for expensive calls is a great solution. Most VoIP providers even offer free domestic calls.
3. Scalability
One of the advantages of VoIP is their low cost, as previously mentioned, but another great benefit is that you can always scale this type of phone system according to your needs.
If you’re still recovering from unforeseen layoffs, then you will appreciate the scalability of a VoIP system because you only ever pay for what you need.
On the other hand, if you are looking to hire new employees, you don’t need to worry anymore about paying expensive fees for additional phone hardware—VoIP systems eliminate the need for this.
4. More Secure
Finally, data security is important in this day and age when everyone is susceptible to hacks and phishing attacks. VoIP providers have been routinely testing their system and protecting it from attacks over the last twenty years. Naturally, IP connections are subject to attacks, and it is important to pick a provider that assures data security so you don’t need to worry about it. There are also tools that can allow companies to apply security policies to define and maintain who has access to which resources. You can see the top 10 tools that you need to know by clicking this link https://em360tech.com/top-10/top-10-identity-and-access-management-iam-tools-2022.
Nowadays, there are numerous certifications that you can look out for to ensure data security:
- ISO/IEC 27001 – a global standard that is applicable to any business
- PCI Compliance – ensures security during credit card transactions
- SOC 2 Compliance – this is relevant for SaaS and cloud computing providers, ensuring data integrity across five pillars: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy
By partnering with a provider that is dedicated to data security, and that has independent third-parties carry out security audits and checks, you can feel more at ease.
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